Is this testing a good idea? Since it does not address the problem, I do not think so. What is missing from our education system is choice and accountability. Since parents (particularly relatively poor parents) do not have a good alternative to the public school system, they cannot hold the public school system accountable for providing a good product.

What educational standards do is provide a basis for test design. That is, test makers write their test questions based upon the standards. Therefore, if we have good standards, we have good tests, but good standards do not teach students. Good teachers do that.

While it is nice to have educational standards, there is really no need for national standards. What we need is competition. In practice, national education standards would just be used to help eliminate competition between state education systems.

I guess the best news is that Virginia has not yet adopted the Common Core Standards. The bad news is that most states have done so. Because we have become so easy to bribe with “other people’s money,” the politicians we elect to run our state governments are just too easy to bribe (here and here).

Words From The Past

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. -- Benjamin Franklin (from here)